I still see plenty of advertisements for FATE groups in Coerthas and see plenty of people tackling FATEs while I've been leveling there. Even participated in a few of them myself and didn't have any trouble getting gold. Likewise for Costa del Sol. I think the problem is that you can't jump into a group of 10 mobs solo spamming Blizzard II anymore and expect to survive, let alone get a gold medal like you could pre-2.1, and some people just can't handle that and declare FATEs to be "impossible" now.